People

Gender and Nationalism in Indigenous Political Movements: A Comparative Study of Nunavut, Canada and Tuva, Russian Federation

The objective of my research is to examine the influence of nationalist ideology on the construction of political identities and on understandings of gender in the indigenous postcolonial world.

By using gender as a specific category of analysis, I will explore the structures of power within national movements and question whether or not national understandings of gender roles affect the level of participation of indigenous women in the public sphere.

I take a comparative approach, exploring both the Inuit political movement in northern Canada and the Tuvan sovereignty movement in Russia, in order to test my hypothesis that nationalist ideology acts as an institution capable of reproducing hierarchies of gender and power in varied settings.

I hope to expand upon the somewhat limited literature covering gender and nationalism in indigenous sovereignty movements as a whole and Nunavut and Tuva in specific by conducting fieldwork, namely interviews with political leaders and a series of focus groups with indigenous women, in both locations during the 2003-2004 academic year.